Want to spend more time getting pissed off at quests and players? WELL LOOK NO FURTHER!!!
This game....is hard to describe under the pretense that it ruined my life. Its addictive yet frustrating to deal with. Its the first MMO I have played for 6 months straight without getting bored. And yet....its not in me to continue being frustrated to no end. Why did I ever enjoy something so....EVIL!?
Story: pretty good
Really something here. The storyline centers around a global war concerning two kingdoms, one of Serdin and one of Kanavan. They were at war due to manipulations by a queen whose name is hard to pronounce (and recall). Due to this war where the serdin queen gave her life to end it all, an organization of "trackers" called Grand Chase was formed to take down the evil queen herself. These trackers are made up of 3 girls and 1 boy....and several joining characters.
Characters: All very like-able
Im actually shocked at an MMO with characters that dont annoy you to any end. You have Elesis, the tomboy swords(wo)man, Lire, the hot elf archer, and Arme, the high pitched voiced mage. The chicks are also joined by the Stereotypical "honor bound hero" Ronan, the Stereotypical ninjaboy/girl Lass, and the hyppie Elf, Ryan (who kicks the most ass). Also you have a belly dancing Amy, and a Jin Kazuma knockoff "Jin", who has yet to be released on NAGC thus far.
Music/Sound: eh....ok
It starts off just like most japanese cartoons, thinking female vocals and soft sounds appeal to american audiences when it comes to a game about beating the crap out of demons. The music is a mixed bag, comprised of casual medevil themese to hard rock O_O. Thankfully you can change the music to suit your own style preferences. EDIT: Not anymore, failtreev is no banning people for not wanting to listen to crappy music.
Gameplay: Awesome
Simple yet effective, the game starts you off with NOT one, but THREE characters....all wear skirts. Yes you start the game off with 3 females and you have to unlock the other characters (which sucks hard). Elesis is the beginner type girl whose melee attacks help thrash through enemies nicely. Lire is the intermediate-advanced range character who is best kept at a distance and Arme is the advanced range character who requires magic to be of any true use.
You have two modes of play. Dungeon and PVP
The game plays like a normal console action platformer, giving you a jump and attack button with other nifty uses that any MMO would give you. The controls are for the most part....good.
DUNGEONS
Your objective is to traverse various dungeons and beat the crap out of everything in your path and make it to the boss. Simple as that. Just beat enemies, jump the occasional platform challenges, and fight the boss. Each dungeon has a specific difficulty setting, one that requires your level to be up to snuff to get through the tides of battle. Ofcourse the earlier levels wont matter after this because you'ed be to high to even bother thinking it's a challenge anymore. You can join in with 3 other players and tackle dungeons together.
PVP
Kick another player's ass....basically. The controls here work differently, IE you can "grab" people. Plus your MP gauge auto charges here instead, because people can quickly die in these matches. Here you can join up with 5 other people and do team battles, free for alls, or holiday minigames.
CLASS ABILITIES
Your characters each have various different abilities that benefit them one way or another. Elesis can run and air dash, while doing millions of combos, Lire can double jump and attack from afar, and Arme has an invincible dash (meaning she is immune to everything during this). Each character also have "skills" (which are the super attacks in the game). Simply hold down the button to "charge" your MP meter, watch the meter to see which attack you hit, and then release. You will pull off devastating moves. How this MP system works is very unique in that the longer you hold it, the different types of skills you can pull off. By looking at the MP gauge, you will see it separated into 3 sections. The further to left of the gauge, the more MP you need to activate the skill. Course thats not hard, considering just beating up enemies (or for arme, sitting on your ass) will fill it up. Typical. The longer you hold the gauge, the more MP you use up (you can see this as well). Each character can carry up to as much as 3-6 skills each.
The other characters you unlock....aren't that unique to the main 3 (cept Ryan....cause he owns). Ronan is basically a replacement for Elesis cause....well...he's OP'ed. Melee attacks AND magic skills...what? Lass is Lire but with close range attacks, and an incredibly short range. Ryan starts off with an axe and sucks but can change into a wolf (so why do I like him? Cause his second class owns like nobody's business) and so on. To explain, each character starts off as one class. You have to unlock each and every character's classes to fully explore their various fighting abilities and unlock even more skills for the characters to use. Everyone will get sick of their first classes rather fast, so getting higher in your levels and getting more classes will give your character more potential to kick some ass. I wont go into further detail about that.
Aside from that, you can also carry around poke....er..."pets". These little critters can aid you in battles by a flick of the pet attack key. They can deal plenty of damage or do other effects, like freezing or the like. You can also equip loads and loads of items.
With all this said, it SOUNDS like a good game....so why do I say it's evil? Other than addiction...well...
Community/Leveling
PVP related issues
-Lag
-Bugs and Errors
Cash Shop
Ntreev
COMMUNITY and LEVELING system: Crap
Video game communities....suck. This one takes the cake. For dungeons, the game employs a level limitation system which gives you lower experience points if the dungeon is not around "your level" (meaning higher dungeons will grant you LOWER experience points than dungeons around your level). That in itself is already stupid. This was done to prevent power leveling. (which, though understandable, is nullified by the fact that people can by and obtain items that can level you FASTER than the game permits.). This brings a HUGE issue within the ranks where people will outright refuse to allow lower leveled players to join in higher leveled dungeons with them. Lower levels joining in = lower experience for you or others. Also the experience system rewards players with higher exp. the BETTER they do in battle IE not dying or taking many hits. And lower levels tend to....die alot. People are DESPERATE to level themselves (I will explain why later) so they've become a bit selfish and refuse help from other players. It doesn't help that lower levels tend to be a bit annoying with requests. Many people will outright BEG you for w/e they want and as a general rule, they aren't really thankful for it. The leveling system has turned the whole dungeon comm. into a civil war of rude insults, general gamefaqs BS, and the like. Its even worse with
PVP issues
Jesus christ. Pvp is the devil's advocate in a backdraft of warfare and fuel for ED's articles. One of the common problems of it is the lack of respect for ones you beat or ones that beat you. People who win matches are likely to throw it in your face and proclaim that you suck. People who lose matches....tend to say you cheated. You can't win at this game in either case. It fuels great frustration on both sides as people just cannot accept or acknowledge one's abilities during a pvp match. The end result is all that matters. Not only that but Dungeoning and PVP are two different beasts, so if you bring your Lire into pvp, it could turn from weak sauce to overpowered in two seconds flat. pvp can make plenty of character classes overpowered due to how poorly the game is designed. based on how the characters are designed, it was designed with "Melee" oriented gameplay in mind, which is odd considering the ranged classes will outclass the others in no time flat. If a person has an arme on their time, you can bet your chances of losing are waaay to high, considering a first class mage can kill the majority of players in higher classes (and even LEVELS) via her third MP skill (meteor). It shows how unbalanced the game really is, and considering that most players like to abuse everything, its really muddled in an endless sea of suck.
LAG
Oh My God....seriously....the ping in this game is god awful. The connection system uses Peer2Peer, so most people's connections depend on one another to fully operate normally. However its beyond any normal reasoning that EVERYONE'S connection would suck. See the system also employs an auto kick where a player with a BAD connection would get automatically kicked from a dungeon or pvp match....which is funny since 95% of the time, a player who would usually have a good connection would STILL get disconnected from a dungeon or match regardless of who had the lag in the first place. It means that 75% of the whole game is unplayable due to this. Most players would have to solo through dungeons over and over and over again (well guess that means no one can F up their experience points). Though PVP thrives on multiplayer so its even WORSE there. Lots of lagging can occur and if its bad, you can find players zipping around a map for no reason. Also you can get stuck at a loading screen...while the game finishes loading for everyone else and you can HEAR the gameplay taking place. This means while you ARE stuck, players in pvp can (and WILL) kill you freely without worrying about retaliation or retribution from you. It doesn't help that some people manipulate the pings of their own modems to self induce lag to screw up other players. Bugs and other stuff occur due to lag exclusively, like players being able to grab you from 2 feet away, or from off a platform above you, etc. plus many hits don't register (IE a hit animation does not occur) or you can hit players two feet away from you causing them to fall back 2 seconds later. And the thing about grabs are that they take out 40% more health than EVERY attack in the game (cept skills and Meteor) and you can get grabbed out of a skill animation and countered that easily, so lag is incredibly dangerous for you and everyone else, but beneficial to the jackasses that induce it themselves. This makes more matches one sided than they should be, and as covered earlier, the community can be dicks about their victories...so pile that on with this....
CASH SHOP
See that cool armor over there that gives that player 30 points MORE stat gain than his level permits? Yeah, you gotta pay for that. Its horrendous that cash items are completely superior to EVERYTHING you can get in this game free. I've played maple story and the cash items were NEVER this overpowered. Most things in BOTS were aesthetic changes and nothing more. But this game? You have an armor at level 35 that gives you stats that you can get free with armor at level 45. What? So I would have to wait 10 levels later to compete with someone currently at my own? Replace the C in Cash to a B for a more accurate acronym. The cash items (combined with pvp and its bugs and glitches) can severely overpower any player that has an obese wallet to pay for it all. Also, not only are the equips better, but so are quest items. You have to buy all of your character/class quests, and guess what? Most job changes are ABSURD. For one quest (Ryan), you have to win 30 pvp matches, collect 40 fragments, and 20 tree trunks. Sound decent? You have to get the trunks by beating a boss, and the drop rate for trunks are......3-5%. What the hell!? But his cash mission? Just beat one boss and collect a crystal. Thats WAAAAY to hard to swallow. Job change quests are even more stupid. One quest has you collecting 300 fragments and 10 (3-5% drop) seals. Cash mission? 10 frags and 1 seal. My god man...even worse is the pets. You can only get ONE pet free while every other pet is one you have to pay for. Also if you want your character to have more than 3 skills, you have to pay for those as well...oh did I mention they are limited? Meaning you have to REBUY all of those skills after they're used up? Why does this suck? Because combined with the braggarts in PVP, people brag about being able to pay for all of this. People will ask you about your stats just to literally compare them to their own and will laugh if yours is lower......no seriously....they actually do this. Plus like I said in pvp, if they can induce lag on you and have all of these powered up items, you will NOT win. All the people that say "you can beat people with cash" are only saying this so people would stop complaining about the cash shop. Because these guys who buy cash think they're special because they "keep the game alive"
NTREEV
These people are responsible mostly for all the damages in the game thus far. The cash shop and PVP are their primary crimes. For one, the original version of this game doesn't thrive dominantly on cash items. Ntreev said otherwise. On top of having slightly easier quests, they make them even sweet by putting all of the best items in cash. Meaning they cater primarly to the ones with bigger pocket books. Course, this shouldn't be seen as a bad thing. They need the money to keep the servers running. Now if only they could put that money to good use and FIX THE DAMN GAME ITSELF! They get MILLIONS and MILLIONS of bug and technical game problem reports...and none of it gets fixed. Those problems mentioned above AND MORE are left untouched. There is a glitch in elven woods that makes your items disappear upon entry. This was reported back in 2008....and it has YET to be fixed. Its June 0friggin9! Why is this not fixed? Its not a cash related problem. See they get a report about a cash pet being buggy, they fix it a day later! The lag and server problems have been reported since the beginning of 08 and yet they get WORSE and WORSE every patch they release. The Patches are mainly updates and nothing more. They dont FIX a damn thing! Oh sure, new character class to waste millions of hours trying to do a quest for, increase those hours with the amount of lag kickings, and you've got yourself a class quest that will take you a MONTH to do. They dont care, you didn't pay them a dime for a "FREE" MMO. The only thing worse than their cash shop are the morons who ass kiss them every step of the way, thinking that complainers of these problems will just up and stop porting the game updates over here just to keep people playing. Oh and they made Gacha as well. You pay money for coins to spend on RANDOM EFFING ITEMS! If you want a special gacha, be prepared to spend TONS of cash on Gacha, because its like the lottery. Thats Revenue generating practices. Ntreev really doesn't care about the game. They use it to get money. The gms KNOW the community is out of control, yet it's poorly governed. They know the game is FULL of glitches, yet it's poorly handled (unless it is cash related). And best of all, PVP is promoted to hell and back, that it encourages the use of cash items, because the players want to win, so they provide the tools necessary. This is disgusting. Ntreev has to be the worst publisher of any game to come to our shore. They care nothing about how well it plays unless there's monetary gain in it. They've broken this game for all it's worth. All for the almighty dollar.
Overall
The game is pure evil. It promotes power and dominance in multiplayer settings, has YOU spending more time trying to fix the bugs and errors of a game that you should be ENJOYING, and Ntreev has you spending MORE money for them to lolly gag on instead of putting those dimes to better use, like not making the NA version suck so much. To hell with you Ntreev.